Early history In the
Middle Ages, the area in
Old Prussia had been settled by the
Nadruvian tribe of the
Baltic Prussians. It was conquered by the
Teutonic Knights in about 1276 and incorporated into the
State of the Teutonic Order. From the 15th century onwards, the Knights largely resettled the lands with
Samogitian and
Lithuanian colonists. Since 1466, it was part of the
Kingdom of Poland as a
fief held by the Teutonic Order. The settlement itself was first mentioned as
Stallupoenen, or
Stallupönen, in 1539, named after a nearby river called
Stalupė in Lithuanian. At that time, with the
secularization of the Order's Prussian lands in 1525, Stallupönen had already become part of the
Duchy of Prussia, a vassal duchy of
Poland which in 1618 was inherited by the
Hohenzollern margraves of
Brandenburg. Stallupönen then belonged to
Brandenburg-Prussia and became a part of the
Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. The church was built by 1589, and Lithuanian-language church services were held here. Local pastor Gregorius Wirczinski was one of the revisers of a Lithuanian psalter published in 1625. The population was decimated during the
Great Northern War plague outbreak in 1710. The settlement was resettled by Lithuanian and German colonists in the following years. Lithuanian poet
Kristijonas Donelaitis was the rector of the local school in 1740–1743. With the construction of railways, the town became well-acquainted to travelers, as it was the last stop on the German-Russian frontier. Here, travelers made the transfer from
standard gauge railway carriages of western Europe to the
broad gauge carriages of Russia. In August 1914, the city and the surrounding area were a focal point of
Battle of Stallupönen between
Russian and
German armies, an opening battle on the
Eastern Front of
World War I. It was occupied by the Russian Army between August 18, 1914 and February 18, 1915. Because of the Lithuanian minority living there,
Lithuania tried unsuccessfully to obtain the town from Germany after regaining independence following World War I. In 1938, the
Nazi regime renamed the town
Ebenrode to erase traces of non-German origin.
World War II During
World War II, the Germans operated a subcamp of the
Stalag I-A prisoner-of-war camp for
Allied POWs in the town. From June 1941 to June 1942, the Germans also operated the POW camp for Soviet officers, then replaced by the Stalag I-D POW camp until October 1942. Poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding and malnutrition resulted in a high mortality rate. The town was overrun by the
Soviet Red Army during
World War II on January 13, 1945. The region was transferred from Germany to the
Russian SFSR in 1945 and made a part of
Kaliningrad Oblast. In 1946, the town, whose German inhabitants had been largely
evacuated or forcibly
expelled not always in accordance with the
Potsdam Agreement, was renamed Nesterov after
Sergey Nesterov, a Soviet war hero who was killed in the vicinity. ==Demographics==